Landscape Architecture and Art, Volume 2, Number 2Aesthetic is defined as the study of sensory or
sensory-emotional values (a pleasing appearance or
effect), sometimes called judgments of sentiment and
taste, and the condition of a judgment of taste is that it
is essentially subjective [34, 20]. For better
understanding of the aim of the senses by aspect of
aesthetics, two definitions of the term „sense‟ in the
framework of this research could be used:
- any of the faculties, as sight, hearing, smell, taste,
or touch, by which humans and animals perceive
stimuli originating from outside or inside the
body; - a faculty or function of the mind analogous to
sensation – the moral sense‟ [6].
The idea that a designed landscape ought to be
visually beautiful is at least as old as the Renaissance
[11]. Complexity and elusiveness contribute to the
sense of the sublime [32, 1]. In the 18th century,
the English landscape beauty objective was to make
an ideal landscape, and the ideas for this aim were
collected from many sources to build up the ideal, but
this aim may have changed the criteria for landscape
beauty in the 18th century, but not its central
importance as a standard by which the designer‟s art
should be judged‟ [11]. The German philosopher
Imanuel Kant (1724-1804) drew a distinction between
two kinds of beauty: The free and unhampered, and
the conditional, which assumes the understanding of
objects, and make various points of view possible; for
example, the functionalist view that „the form follows
the function‟, or the moralist view that „beauty lies in
goodness‟ [32]. If landscape design could be seen
only as a form of art-making, then the common
wisdom held that any work of landscape architecture
succeeded or failed according to how beautiful it was
to look at‟ [20]. In our nature, there is a need to be a
very radical and wide-spread tendency to observe
beauty and to value it [25]. „Today, man provokes
Nature with overconfidence in his power and ability
to control and alter the environment‟ [33]. One of the
designer‟s roles as a professional is to ensure that all
reasonable steps are taken during the design process
of landscape elements to protect the health, safety,
and welfare of the public users of any space [13].
The landscape planning process is developed in a
more complex way, as the „sense‟ of landscape can be
found in the intersection of different dimensions, and
for this reason, assessments, concerning the various
aspects and their relations are required [3]. In various
situations, aesthetics planning is a process that occurs
at every stage of design, construction, and
maintenance [20]. One of the goals of the landscape
architect is to fit the functionally-built environment or
other facility into the adjacent landscape in a way that
is complementary to, and enhances, the existing
landscape. Achieving this goal requires consideration
of natural, ecological, aesthetic, economic, social,
cultural, and historical influences related to that
landscape [20]. Details in landscape take a significant
role in the functions of aesthetic. „Landscape should
please the eye. Every truly great landscape has great
details, details that contribute to the aesthetic themes
of the site that complement one another, and create
beauty out of the ordinary materials and necessities of
construction.
A landscape with a splendid thematic idea can fail
landscape architecture if it has poor details:
Details that are badly matched to its primary aesthetic
that do not relate strongly to one another, or that fail
to lift their materials above the ordinary‟ [24].
Professor Kirkwood outlines landscape detail as a
primary design activity. „Aesthetic and environmental
changes are alterations to the original design and
artistic intentions of the project through its detail
forms. Transformations to the larger design
context are further instances of such change.
These include detail forms that are associated
with inappropriate or outdated design strategies or
have been altered because of new insights
into our understanding of environmental and
natural systems‟ [13].
With respect to the hydropower buildings
technical requirements, aesthetics in these territories
may be defined as dealing with the visual integration
of built environment into the fabric of a landscape
in a way that blends with or complements
that setting [20].Qualities of Method
Among appropriate aesthetic assessment
indication methods for the researched landscapes,
one of characteristic markers is to find
landscape indicators, which tend to have
universality, and it is possible to search for these
indicators; for example, landscape elements,
which are connected with particular landscapes in
the researched territories. These indicators are
extremely sensitive to the value attributed to certain
landscapes by the population [3]. In literature,
the classification of landscape attributes is possible
and could be divided in three groups:
1) the existence of landscape elements,
type and classification;
2) the properties of landscape elements;
3) the result of interrelationship between
landscape elements [36].
„Experts or professionals rather than the general
public often make decisions involving visual
impacts‟ [12], and „some also believe that the public
lacks the experience and knowledge that is needed to
be fully sensitive to aesthetic quality‟ [2].
Another important question, concerning the
selection of aesthetic assessment method, is the